A fourth iteration of the Big Tent Communique for Catania will very shortly be finalised for printing and tabling there.
In this near-final draft the general text seeks to balance between the many perspectives and elements in a complex crisis in ways that challenge without provoking key parties out of taking it seriously.
The main difficulty, other than containing length and honouring diverse perspectives, is in naming specific behaviours - actions as well as awareness and attitudes – that are realistic, feasible, and promise to make a practical difference.
Please make time now to advise what you think would be best, before le jeu est fait. You will see where the text moves from statements and analysis to this question. In particular look at the section near the end. Enter your comments below to be able to further influence what is printed and tabled at Catania. Mant thanks. Chris Duke 12 9 15
Here is the current Draft:
Bíg Tent Communique VI
Local Identities and Global Citizenship: A Message from Catania and Challenges for Universities
Further revised 4th draft 12 9 15
Preamble: The Sixth Big Tent Communique – where and why?
The Big Tent is a group of national, regional and global networks that share a focus on community-university engagement and social responsibility of higher education and have agreed to issue statements from time to time.
The first Big Tent communique, on community university engagement, had a focus on North-South cooperation and was issued in 2010. This new Communique arose from thinking about the location in Sicily of the Pascal Annual Conference on 7-9 October 2015 in Catania ‘on the frontier of fortress Europe’. Its theme is how cities and their regions are connected to their universities at strategic frontiers.
The 2015 Context - a World in Disorder
Our theme partly echoes that of the first Big Tent communique in 2010: Enhancing North-South Cooperation in Community-University Engagement. What is happening in Europe today and in other North-South frontier situations globally is the antithesis of North-South cooperation.
There is rising uncertainty in many arenas of public and community affairs world-wide: environmental sustainability, peace, economic instability, exploding inequality, poverty, youth unemployment and lost identity, health and mental illness, ageing and the massive movement of peoples. The history of our world is a history of migration and movement. How do different generations, people and places adapt to what is and will be a continuing phenomenon?
Universities can play an important part in helping to address these huge challenges, both through collaborating to generate research that seeks to make sense of these complex processes, and through their role to support education – through their graduates, and through a wider role in supporting community learning. We also recognise that some of the ways in which universities currently work perpetuate conditions that lead to social inequality, and exacerbate these problems.
We believe universities need to take a more active role in collaborating with civil society to generate powerful knowledge, and open up their work to much more fruitful interaction with wider society. Urgent attention should be paid to how universities prepare their graduates to play a role in building a more equal and fairer world, and how they support the wider challenges of empowering citizens to work together, across these deep divides, to build a better world.
A paradox
We confront a paradox. In democracies ‘ordinary’ people choose governments. We believe in active participatory citizenship. But in the face of contemporary crisis, many people seek security by turning in on themselves. We see xenophobia and a lack of generosity towards displaced refugees. The post-War ‘European project’ is threatened by divisive and contradictory divisions.
This paradox threatens trust in the wisdom, decency, humanity and communal ethic on which participatory democracy rests. If hearts are closed, vision narrowed and shortened by fear, what does this mean for political devolution and local power-sharing engagement? Locally grounded xenophobia fed by hyperbolic media obstructs constructive regional engagement.
Where do different universities and systems stand? Inaction is a form of action. They are so much part of their societies that they cannot simply stand apart. Their political, historical and cultural circumstances however vary greatly.
Local identity for global citizenship – a message from Catania
New peoples are joining a Europe whose history is one of invasions. New arrivals are often most feared by those most shielded from newcomers. The same is true of the newer ‘Norths’ of Australia and North America. Emigration northward from the South is a natural sequel to massive European colonial invasion and conquest, even without bloody violence engulfing especially swathes of the Middle East and Africa.
Southern governments and societies are failing to create the conditions necessary to keep their populations at home. Escalating civil wars arise from religious fundamentalism, political intolerance and lack of participation in governance by ordinary people. Shrinking national economies have led to rising youth unemployment. What more can universities do here: in their teaching, in their research and its use, in their local-regional civil society settings?
A balance must be struck between the needs of the local populace and those of immigrants and refugees. Governments and institutions must recognise and manage national needs, and also the regional and international needs that affect most countries.
Words, ideas and control mostly flow North to South, refugees mostly but not exclusively the other way. Internally displaced peoples also exist in their millions in Asia and Africa.
Some of these people have come to Catania where we meet. Those of us in higher education need to find a voice beyond the technical, managerial and narrowly economic, and look for a deeper way of hearing and acting on the concerns of ordinary citizens: refugees, unemployed, the homeless and those otherwise excluded. We are influential. We play a vital role by what and how we teach, as ‘public intellectuals’ and in the corridors of power.
How can the possibility of global citizenship driven by the youth of today be embraced? Nearly half the populations of Asian countries are young people below the age of 25 who have been hearing of globalisation since their childhood. They connect world-wide via smart phones and the internet. What kind of ‘internationalisation’ do we play in our own universities and also civil society settings?
Young people have begun to sharethe global aspirations of One World. For them, movement from the villages to small towns to mega-cities of their own country, and beyond its historical borders, is one seamless aspiration. This generation is beginning to experience global citizenship. Yet 'host' communities and governments are resistant to this 'invasion of youth’. They fear change and are uncertain what future rising waves of youthful mobility and migrations bring.
What Can Be Done?
What isthe role of the North, as movements of people increase? Can we better focus our research and engagement efforts to make more intelligent and humanitarian use of the new energies and resources brought by migration? Can we also contribute to strengthening conditions in other parts of the world, so that people will have equal opportunities where they are?
What is the solution for the South as they lose the youthful population that should be developing their own countries? Universities in the South, with their large numbers of youth, have a bigger role to play that will make life in the South acceptable as part of the global variety of ways of living. Universities in both North and South are key structures of transformation. There needs to be more emphasis on engagement in the global South, and on new forms of engagement in the global North.
A Call to Action
We call on all institutions of higher education urgently to undertake collaborative actions with municipalities, local governments, community groups and social movements to address the interrelated issues ofmigration, youth employment, peace and inequality.
Transforming the Culture of Engaged Universities.
This requires universities to take to heart as their primary task the present and future of our inherited local and global world. A massive community learning campaign is needed, no less challenging than mass national literacy campaigns. We share a duty of care for the future of our young who have little work, little sense of belonging to anything anywhere. Within and beyond world university rankings we need awareness of critical local and global issues linked to transformed practices of engagement. This means respecting the co-construction of knowledge; linking with local governments, organisations and social movements; new reward structures for academic staff; and a change in the culture and language of institutions of higher education.
Finding answers needs abiding optimism; new, transformative, forms of individual and collective engaged lifelong learning; new pedagogies; public and community support for ethically-based learning; research for action. A good role model for senior university managers to foster courage, honesty, public service and humanity might be the nurturing gardener. For university staff, expert in their fields of knowledge and disciplines, and capable administrators of complex knowledge organisations, the first duty is to do good for the wide and the local world.
Globally universities must together defend what they stand for, supporting one another in solidarity for truth and long-term utility. They must be an openly committed part of their community and society, speaking truth to the power of which they cannot but be part.
Engaged Actions
[What is the best way to end, and what action items do we list? The Communique needs a positive note of action for universities, not have us leave saying ‘just more talking - can’t we also do something’?]
[Here we need a set of challenges / questions for people to debate, discuss and work out how far they think they can travel to respond to the humanitarian disaster we are living through. The kinds of questions / challenges we pose might include:]
Universities
- What responsibility should universities take for the crisis? Their political, historical and cultural circumstances vary greatly.
- How could universities’ internationalisation strategies be adapted and work to build equality between north and south?
- How can universities, both global North and South, express solidarity with refugees, economic migrants and other poor and desperate people, in each and every country, in practical ways?
- How can universities strike a better balance between the huge pressures to compete in a global market and their shared core mission to be very good at doing good?
Regions and localities
Regions must take responsible control of their own destinies through their governance and daily practice. They should contribute robustly to national debate and policy-making, serving as channels of local experience, knowledge and wishes to carry out with integrity properly deliberated and adopted policies. They must prioritise real-world needs, helping citizens and communities to be informed and actively to make their own destiny. Local knowledge is essential for sustainable local development.
By the way they govern and manage, devolved governments can help the applied learning of their communities. They can partner universities, colleges and schools as knowledge-makers and disseminators, seeking their relevant commitment and practical involvement, and involving them in the development of a strategic vision for the city or region. They should address the immediate and long-term social and humanitarian needs of their region and country no less than the economic.
New forms of networking can advance systemic reforms and essential cooperation. New forms of engagement mean multi-sectoral partnerships: universities and governments working with industries and NGOs. We can cooperate to support low income country universities and social movements. University-to-university partnerships embedded in city-to-city and region-to-region partnerships will enrich university-to-university linkages, making them more robust intellectually and in other ways.
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[We also had an earlier longer-draft section. Do we want to use any of this material?]
Undertakings by Big Tent Partners
We will work (individually, institutionally and collectively) to ensure that universities engage with local and regional, ethnic and cultural, social and economic communities, as well as with global citizenry and destiny. We advocate true university partnership with civil society making and using fitting language and knowledge to do so.
We pledge not to hide from political involvement. Making change happen means getting involved and politically committed. We call on educators and communities to engage to build a better, safer world for all.
We reject ideological shrinking the State. We believe that central and local governments should listen, devolve and share more than many do. We will work for more sustainable, people-centred development, shared globally and enacted locally.
We do not know just how Europe (in the context of this communique) can reconcile fearful citizens and closing borders with desperate refugee dispossession. We do not pretend to know exactly what our governments should do; but we can say how they should go about learning and doing right.
We pledge to argue for, and ourselves to apply, principles of good governance based on ecological and social sustainability, equal concern, and opportunity for all. We abhor threats to development aid budgets if societies and governments turn in on themselves.
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Budd Hall has just sent me a challenging and powerful piece received from fellow- Co-Chair of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, Rajesh Tandon. It is written and should be read at a moment of what many feel to be powerless despair about the grim misery of others whom we cannot help.
Though not written for the Big Tent Communique now being finalised, it is obviously relevant here and for the Catania Conference, so I am posting it with apologies to any American or Hungarian friend who might find it offensive.
One co-author is Budapest-born Joseph B. Juhász, now Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Colorado and a holocaust survivor who emigrated to the USA in 1951; the other, Jon Van Til, I do not know. It is called Exodus 2015: The World Wakens to a Wall.
As the larger than Biblical flow of migrants heads North from the Balkans, Hungary's government seeks to reverse, or at least redirect, its course. On the border with Serbia, prime minister Viktor Orbán has decreed a wall, deployed troops, constructed holding pens, and now plans a set of makeshift courtrooms - all designed to repel the over 3,000 daily entrants to his country from the South.
So far the flow of migrants has not been stopped; they have only been harassed, delayed, and subjected to the brutal pangs of extreme homelessness. Day after day, they enter Hungary in search of Budapest, the venerable gateway to the North and West that has served as a principal stop for ages on the Silk Road, the Orient Express, and the River Danube.
But Orbán is a determined man, fortified both by the support of his people and his confidence that he can always outpoint his fellow leaders in the European Union. He stands at the gates of Schengenland as the defender of Western Christian Europe from the Muslim hordes, doubtless convinced that he will win the support of silent majorities all over that continent. He may well succeed in building the perfect wall, deflecting the river of migrants to forsaken Serbian airstrips or its one Adriatic port. From there, the Exodus might continue on a scale yet unknown in history, by massive transfers by plane and ship, should the nations of the world begin to address their next big problem: how to redistribute the millions desperate to leave Syria and many other war-zones and poverty-pits of the Middle East and Africa.
What is happening geo-politically in our world that stirs this human disaster that Orbán seeks to withstand on his Serbian border? We start a list:
- The United States, having failed to prevail in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, has now added Syria to its growing list of military disasters - however profitable has been the manufacture of weapons and continuing access to Middle Eastern oil associated with these adventures.
- China (The People's Republic) has emerged as no less than the 2nd Economic Power, now building the Silk Road literally in iron, a rail link between itself and Europe.
- Russia remains the 2nd Military Power, its permanent fleet now in the Mediterranean and Sebastopol defended from NATO control. Putinism is alive and well, and now helps prop the Assad regime in Syria.
- The Germans succeeded in vetoing war with Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
- Aided and abetted possibly but certainly precipitated by the USA, a flood of refugees is now in Exodus from the Middle East through Constantinople and up the route of the Orient Express.
- The USA and the rest of the World save Israel has re-oriented its Iran Policy, and in the USA, AIPAC, now revealed as a right-Republican lobby in decline, has suffered its first significant defeat since its founding in 1951.
- Pope Francis is speaking forcefully on a number of vital global issues, including the need to address the migration crisis in a humane and effective manner.
- And, in Hungary, Viktor Orbán has placed himself as a roadblock not to the Chinese, nor to the Russians, nor for that matter to the Germans, but most certainly to the Americans on a variety of issues, and most notably that of migration.
Hungary's stance forces us to note that Serbia is not a cul-de-sac with only an exit through Hungary. Hungary has 1/30 of the population of the USA and 1/100 of its land area. Is Hungary supposed to absorb or provide a migration route for this exodus? Viktor Orbán says "No". This is about commerce, it is about geopolitics, and it is about the current world order. It is also about Hungarian history and the Hungarian constitution, now firmly under Orban's control. It would appear that Orbán is the willing Hungarian Patient, a second fiddler-on-the-roof (perhaps continuing to serenade Putin?).
What should be done?
Well, to begin with, more or less under any rubric of "should," the USA should take its share of the refugees and not become, once again, the laughing stock of the rest of the world - its big Trumpian talker and feeble solver of problems. And while it is at it, the USA might join with the Pope, the UN, and the EU in developing plans for moving many millions of refugees to their new countries in the days, months, and years ahead.
And the USA might stop bankrupting itself while casting itself in the image of itself when it was victorious in the Pacific and the main beneficiary the Soviet victory in Europe. Those days are gone. We hope and believe we now live in the age of The Iran Deal, where dialogue replaces destruction. And, just one more, how about a realistic Eurasian policy for the USA?
Back now to the Hungarian Crisis: In truth Viktor is not Victoria -he is not merely a product of history; he is making history in his own often disagreeable ways. The USA would be well off to tailor its policy toward Hungary based on current realities rather than retracing its past misadventures with Iran (And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Syria. And so on...). The USA will not (and should not) respond to the migrant crisis by seeking to produce regime change in Hungary - that's a task for Hungarians to address in their own streets, and in forthcoming elections. It would be better to live with than try to destabilize or remove the Orbán regime - distasteful as those folks are to those who continue to think that a modicum of social justice should emerge as a product of periodic elections.
We conclude by noting the cunning of reason involved in Orban's observation that there are limits to European responsibilities for the migrants. We must surely begin to recognize the urgent need for the global community to design and implement the massive redistribution of populations required by the painful realities of Exodus 2015.